Navigate:

'It could be luck. It could be skill.'

The federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on homeland security. |
AP Photo
Close

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, seven years after the 9/11 Commission issued its report, nine key recommendations out of 41 haven’t been enacted. They include proposals to consolidate congressional oversight of counterterrorism efforts, designate a unified point of command for terrorist incidents and set up radio systems that allow firefighters and police to communicate with each other easily during an emergency response. A recommendation to standardize driver’s licenses into a secure “Real ID” became federal law in 2004 but because of state objections has yet to be implemented.

“We’ve become a little too complacent,” Hamilton said. “The American people would be appalled if they knew that 10 years after 9/11, we can’t talk to one another [during] a disaster and we don’t know who’s in charge. That’s an outrage.”

Text Size

-

+

reset

While legislation to set aside additional radio frequencies for emergency personnel is still languishing in Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insisted last week that the technical problems for voice communications among police, fire and security agencies in major metropolitan areas have been fixed.

During the D.C.-area earthquake in August, cellphone systems were overwhelmed, but “the first responders, as far as I’ve been given to understand, were all able to communicate with each other,” Napolitano said. “That capability was there. Is it 100 percent all over the country? No, but what we’re doing now is filling out the areas.”

Hamilton said inaction by the Obama administration on other 9/11 Commission recommendations is downright puzzling. After campaigning on a platform of restoring civil liberties, Obama has moved at a glacial pace to set up a privacy and civil liberties board mandated by Congress to look at sensitive practices like airport security procedures that could veer into racial profiling.

And some counterterrorism experts are also pointing to a new danger that stems from the relative absence of successful terrorism in the U.S. over the past decade: public expectations that attacks can be avoided altogether. At a homeland security conference in July, several former high-level counterterrorism officials expressed concern that the expectations of near-infallibility the public has developed since Sept. 11 could actually make the next attack more devastating.

“The American people do need to understand that at least smaller-scale terrorist attacks are with us for the foreseeable future. And the way that we fundamentally defeat that threat, which is very difficult to stop in its entirety, is to maintain a culture of resilience within the public sphere and within the political sphere and frankly within the media sphere in a way that we’re not delivering victories to our enemies that they otherwise would not enjoy,” former National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter told the Aspen Security Forum.

Administration officials now seem to be hewing a bit closer to the more candid approach Leiter advocates.

“There may come a time, despite best efforts, that one of these plots succeeds,” Napolitano said in Aspen. “Prevention is not always 100 percent and, by the way, just because one act was committed or was successful, doesn’t mean [the terrorists] won anything. We’re still the same — the United States.”

It could be that we are living on borrowed time. What if terrorists exploded a bomb high in the stratosphere creating an Electro Magnetic Impulse (EMI) attack that instantly totally destroys everything electronic, including our electric grid. Scientists are very worried about this. A few weeks ago during the East Coast earthquake, cell phones didn't work. How much worse would it be if more than half the country is off-line, and nothing electronic worked, including the computers in our cars? How would you reach your children or grandchildren at school to get them home? Then you get to worry about food, because trucks that deliver to stores can't run either, etc. Read the book "One Second After" to get an idea of how bad it would be. I worry more about that than some idiot blowing up a plane, because millions would be affected at the same time, and no one would know for sure who was responsible for setting our country back hundreds of years. The terrorists would have won.

What if terrorists exploded a bomb high in the stratosphere creating an Electro Magnetic Impulse (EMI) attack that instantly totally destroys everything electronic, including our electric grid. Scientists are very worried about this.

I'm not going to diminish this possibility, but.....I will.

The EMI requires a high altitude explosion of a large nuke.

As I understand it, the missile delivering the warhead would be easily traceable.

Goes to show just how weak the Republicans really are on defending this country. The cowards who pulled off the 9/11 attacks were the lucky ones everything was laid out before them like a gift, they walk aboard a jet armed with small knives walk into the unsecured cabin hijack it, we know the rest. Those buildings should not have come down like they did because the planes were tiny in comparison to the buildings.

They haven't pulled another 9-11 because they're incompetent morons....and very few in number.

That said, I am disappointed we haven't done squat about gun laws in the US. There is NOTHING in the Constitution about regular people owning guns; only "organized militias"-- the police, army, national guard. Gun-oriented terrorists don't do large scale attacks like 9/11, but the incidents are large in number -- Virginia tech; Arizona; numerous random shopping malls, almost monthly. I WOULD feel a bit safer if we had reasonable gun laws, e.g. no guns if you are under treatment for mental illness (like the Va. Tech guy).

A smoky haze from wildfires hangs over the Galleria area skyline Thursday.

AUSTIN - A weekend tribute to Texas firefighters has been canceled because the honorees are busy battling wildfires.

A spokeswoman with the Texas Wildfire Relief Fund says the group's ceremony, scheduled for Sunday on the steps of the Texas Capitol, has been canceled.

Kelsey Coleman told The Associated Press that the people being honored, volunteer firefighters, are working to put out wildfires.

The nonprofit Texas Wildfire Relief Fund has been working to raise money for volunteer firefighters whose resources have been drained during the wildfire season.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A runaway wildfire that's consumed more than 15,000 acres north of Houston, just one of dozens of blazes firefighters across the state are battling, continued to gain ground and was 60 percent contained as of Friday morning, according to the Texas Forest Service.

The fire, which began on Monday, is on the verge of dipping into Harris County - after already burning through thousands of acres in Montgomery, Grimes and Waller counties, infrared camera data from a fly-over showed. Authorities said the fire's on the edge of the Waller-Harris County line.

Houston-area residents downwind from the blaze have already seen smoke from the wildfires. Northwest portions of Harris County remained under an air quality advisory as public health officials are concerned about small particulate matter in the air, which includes smoke, soot and dust.

In Bastrop County, the most destructive wildfire in state history remained 30 percent contained Thursday evening, although officials said they were optimistic that might improve. Starting north of here Sunday afternoon, it spread rapidly, killed two people, caused the evacuation of about 5,000 others and destroyed 1,386 structures by the latest count.

Elsewhere in the state, fires are erupting at a fast pace, especially in East Texas, officials said.

"There were 176 fires burning in Texas on Wednesday and 120 of them were in East Texas," said Warren Bienlenberg, Texas Forest Service spokesman. "Of the 20 new fires that popped up this same day, we found 19 of them in East Texas."

Request to FEMA

State officials sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency a request to have Texas declared a major disaster area and were waiting for a reply. President Barack Obama on Wednesday promised Gov. Rick Perry the government's full support and offered condolences for the loss of life in the state. Perry on Thursday wrote the president to thank him and urge him to follow through.

Back home, an estimated 4,600 residents remained evacuated from their homes in a large northeast section of Waller County and the adjacent southern end of Grimes County, as weary firefighters made a strong stand in Waller to stop the leading edge of the fire, which was racing into parched, dry forest there.

"It's only a half-mile from the Waller-Grimes County line," said Grimes County Sheriff Don Sowell. "Right now it looks like its coming to us. But it's changed directions seven times today. Every time the wind shifts. It's very unpredictable."

Sparks fly in the wind, igniting the bone-dry underbrush and flaring up into the equally dry trees, making it easy to jump the fire breaks, authorities explained.

Magnolia schools close

The fire has destroyed about 75 homes in Waller County, while Montgomery County and Grimes County together reported three homes were destroyed.

All schools in the Magnolia school district will be closed today, in part, officials said, because employees who live in the area of the fires are not able to return to work.

Reinforcements

As the scope of the fires has expanded, resources have been stretched and reinforcements are being called in.

A "type one" incident management team from California was flown in to manage the fire.

At the September 7 Republican debate, Ron Paul clashed with fellow Texan Rick Perry once again.

This time, things got physical.

During a commercial break, Perry walked up to Paul's podium, physically grabbed Paul's wrist, and pointed at Paul's face with his other hand.

Why are you spamming almost every Politico story with your off-topic Perry/Ron Paul bullcrap. I believe this country has been spared another terrorist tragedy partly because of luck, and partially because of the skill of the people assigned the task of protecting us. One thing that I believe to be true is that if Ron Paul was elected president our country would be in more danger due to Paul's radical isolationist views. Much of the intelligence that we receive from other countries is due in part to the relationships we have with those countries. If Paul's isolationist views were adopted few if any other countries would cooperate with us on intelligence matters.

I'm sure the reason we haven't had another large terrorist attack on our soil is a combination of luck, vigilance and preemptive actions. The fact that we took the fight to their front yard drawing the rats into the open allowed us to kill so many of them along with their inability to carryout some of their attempts to ignite underwear bombs, car bombs and tennis shoe bombs.

We should not forget we haven't been successful at every turn though. There has been the Fort Hood attack along with other small successes on our soil.

The worst thing that could happen at this stage is for us not to continue to take them serious.

Terreriosts are pretty much unintelligent people. They rely on the weakness of others to acheive their goals. They do know that their best shot though is when America is run by the democrats. Because they are weak on enforcement of laws like immigration and they want to deminish the American military. So let's all root for the democrats to stay in power. Afterall, having a weak economy, military and open borders is something to be oh so proud of. Can't you stupid people get that through your thick tea party skulls?

This is what happens when you get a President who has lost his mojo. When he is no longer viewed as relevant or powerful. When he has sunk the perception of US strength.\

When the President looks "embattled" and can no longer command respect of foreign leaders or foreign nations, then those with evil intent feel confident they can attack the US with impunity. When tinpot dictators can thumb their nose at the US like is done by Venezuela, Iran and N. Korea, terrorists view it as an opportunity to strike at the heart of the US.

While Bush was able to unite the nation and strike back at enemies in foreign lands following a devastating attack, that seems unlikely for Obama. True, the nation will "come together" if we suffer from such an attack. But that will probably not redound to the advantage of Obama. Quite the contrary, it will likely diminish him in the eyes of the nation.

Let's hope it doesn't happen. Let's hope we can avoid another catastrophe. But it is clear that any future attack will not be "unforeseen". Will Obama be personally responsible? Of course not. But he will not be seen as a strong leader who used the power of the nation to prevent such an attack either.

Obama has devolved into the image of a caretaker. Someone who occupies the office of President for a short period until we can elect a new one with a bolder vision of how to restore national power.

Even the Soros funded "useful idiots" at Politico should be reporting on the latest, of so many scandals from the Obama WH. We had another government raid and a bomb scare all on the same day as the campaign speech from Obama...

FBI agents on Thursday executed search warrants at the California headquarters of Solyndra LLC, which was awarded more than $500 million in federal stimulus loans in 2009 to make solar panels in what the Obama administration

“As our investigation continues, we hope to hear directly from Solyndra’s executives next week — the same executives who visited Capitol Hill as part of a PR campaign in July and misrepresented the company’s financial situation,” the lawmakers said. The raid provides the starkest example yet of how fast Solyndra has fallen after winning lucrative loans and widespread praise from top government officials.

A little more than a year ago, President Obama hailed Solyndra during a tour of the company, saying it expected to hire 1,000 workers and make enough panels over the lifetime of its planned expanded facility that it would be like replacing eight coal-fired power plants.

The company’s bankruptcy petition was filed two years after Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Vice President Joseph R. Biden announced approval of $535 million in federal loans to Solyndra under a green energy program touted by Mr. Obama.

Republicans have been looking into the Solyndra loan for several months and have subpoenaed documents concerning it from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Mr. Stearns and Mr. Upton sent a letter last week to the White House seeking information about its role in the loans to Solyndra.

In the letter, Mr. Stearns and Mr. Upton said they have learned that Energy Department officials, as well as officials from the OMB, were aware of White House interest in the Solyndra loan deal. In addition, they said they were aware that a major investor in Solyndra, George Kaiser, was a bundler for Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign.